Tidio's pricing page opens at a friendly $29 a month. What it doesn't tell you is that $29 buys live chat only - and the AI chatbot you actually came for, Lyro, is a separate subscription with its own meter. Stack the base plan and the AI add-on together, and a small team's real Tidio bill is $68/mo at the low end before volume and overages push it higher. Here's the honest 2026 breakdown.
How Tidio actually charges: three separate meters
Tidio is not one product with one price. It sells a help desk (live chat, inbox, ticketing), an AI agent called Lyro, and a marketing automation tool called Flows - and each one bills separately. You can buy Lyro alone, or the help desk alone, or bundle them, but the advertised plan price never includes the AI.
That's the first thing to understand about Tidio pricing in 2026: the sticker price is a live-chat price. The AI is always a line item on top.
Help desk plans: the sticker prices
| Price (annual billing) | Billable conversations/mo | Operator seats | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 | Up to 10 |
| Starter | $24.17/mo ($29 monthly) | 100 | Up to 10 |
| Growth | from $49.17/mo (from $59 monthly) | 250-2,000 | Up to 10 |
| Plus | from $300/mo + monthly usage | Custom (2,000+) | Custom |
Most plans cap you at 10 operator seats. If your team grows past 10 people, the only upgrade path is the Plus plan - which starts at $300/mo plus monthly usage. That's a jump of several hundred dollars a month, not a seat add-on.
Lyro AI: the add-on that changes the math
Lyro is Tidio's AI agent, and it is not included in any base plan. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, as a lifetime trial - not a monthly allowance. After those are used, you subscribe to a Lyro plan that refreshes your quota monthly:
| Lyro conversations/mo | Monthly billing | Annual billing |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | $39/mo | $32.50/mo |
| 100-1,000 (tiered) | Scales up | Scales up |
Tidio publishes a price only for the entry tier; higher quotas step up from there, and beyond 1,000 conversations it moves you to Plus or Premium for custom limits and pricing. Note what 50 Lyro conversations means: one AI conversation per day for a month. The moment a store sees real traffic, 50 is gone in a morning, and you're either buying more quota or turning the AI off.
What a small team actually pays
Put the pieces together for a realistic scenario - a three-person store that wants AI to deflect the routine questions and a human inbox for everything else:
- Base plan: Starter at $29/mo covers 100 human conversations - a fraction of a busy store's volume, so most teams sit on Growth at $59/mo.
- Lyro AI: from $39/mo (monthly billing) for 50 AI conversations - past the free one-off quota, with tiered pricing as volume grows.
- Total: from $68/mo (Starter plus the entry Lyro quota) to $98/mo on Growth - and more as Lyro volume, seats, and overages enter the picture.
That's the pattern every Tidio pricing review reaches: cheap to start, expensive the moment AI volume scales. The advertised $29 plan and the real AI-enabled setup are different products.
The structural problems with the model
- AI is metered per conversation. Success is billed. The better Lyro gets at resolving tickets, the more quota you buy. It's the same per-resolution trap as Intercom's Fin, just priced per conversation instead of per resolution.
- Three quotas bill in parallel. Conversations, Lyro volume, and Flows reach are three independent meters. You can't predict the bill without modeling all three.
- The 10-seat ceiling. Outgrowing 10 operators forces the Plus jump - from ~$50/mo plans to $300/mo plus usage, the single biggest cost cliff in the category.
- The base price hides the AI. The plan page shows live-chat pricing; the AI you came for is a separate decision you discover later.
Lyro handles the same questions your business gets every day - the question is whether you want that volume metered, or covered at a flat price.
What to look for instead
Tidio's strengths are real: a clean inbox, strong ecommerce integrations, and conversation-based pricing that's fair at small scale. The problem is the model, not the product. Before you commit, compare on these points:
- A flat monthly price where AI is included - not an add-on on top of an add-on.
- No per-seat cap that forces a several-hundred-dollar plan jump when your team grows.
- No per-conversation AI meter that bills your best automation months.
- Unlimited team members, so the software cost doesn't scale with headcount.
How Chatonn prices AI support instead
Chatonn uses flat monthly plans with AI included. Pro is $49/month - that covers AI-managed conversations with no API keys needed, auto cost-routing to the cheapest capable model (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, Groq, or self-hosted Ollama), unlimited team members, and 50 knowledge sources. Business is $149/month and adds white-label branding, 3 workspaces, unlimited knowledge sources, and API access. No per-seat fees, no per-conversation AI meters, and no plan cliff when your team grows.
Want to try it for free? Bring your own keys on the Free plan at chatonn.com and get 500 conversations a month without paying anything. Compare the plans side by side on the pricing page - then decide whether you'd rather predict your AI bill or meter it.
Put this into practice
Chatonn turns your documentation into an AI support agent that answers instantly and hands off to your team when it should.